


ashes to ashes

by cosmicallybrownie



Category: Satan and Me (Webcomic)
Genre: Blood, Canon Universe, F/M, Food mention, Introspection, One Shot, Swearing, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 10:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11689518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicallybrownie/pseuds/cosmicallybrownie
Summary: The girl sitting across from Lucifer at the diner is a stranger with Natalie's face. The fear that fills her gaze when she looks at him nearly aches worse than Natalie's death. Lucifer wades through the waves of sorrow cresting over him as he contemplates how to move forward from the artificially lit diner to restore Natalie's memories.





	ashes to ashes

Her eyes were hollow.

He could count the pulses of fear rolling through her with every flutter of her eyelashes. The fraction of a second that it took to blink was the only thing separating Lucifer from Natalie’s seeking gaze that wanted to ask so many questions. Uncertainty arrested her tongue and the blinks only added up to selfish portions of time that weren’t enough for Lucifer’s shoulders to relax.

The hum of the diner around him was a quiet cacophony that raked against the tight skin of his back. Rattling silverware and the static from an old jukebox that still ran on dimes snaked down his spine, pressing whispers of tension into the muscles that strained under his sorrow.

Natalie was wrong.

His forearms stuck to the lacquered wooden table, sticky from the residue of something that came before. The heavy clear coat formed thick droplets in the seams of the wood, and bore divets and nicks from years of constant use and heavy plates. He traced a finger along a curve that lead into the deepest cut of all, practically bifurcating the table in its efficiency.

He had never felt so separated from her. He would almost prefer he was still tethered to Hell.

The screams would be easier to deal with than the polite mill of chatter and scrape of old pans against the iron stoves.

(And he would still be connected to Natalie by a contract. By the thin golden chain linking their souls into eternity.)

Her hands were tucked into her lap, and she was shrinking. She folded in on herself, her watery eyes shifting in and out of focus as she tried to look at everything but him, while still studying him. A storybook character brought to life, frighteningly handsome and striking in a way that made her doubt every warning blaring across her vision. Natalie looked every part of the sacrificial lamb brought before him as an offering, and Lucifer leaned his cheek against his palm to look at her.

His acute hearing flushed out the resounding chorus of a dated song, and he could hear Natalie’s stomach whine with hunger, and annoyance flared up in him, sudden and sharp enough for him to break the silence.

“For the love of God, if you don’t eat something today I’m going to have to force feed you.” Frustration tinged with worry burned on his tongue like the spices he had only tasted once in the garden. He’d helped create them, sampling incensed leaves that were drowning in decadence. “It’s been three days.”

“I’m sorry,” She apologized, looking away. Looking anywhere but at him, afraid of what she might discover. “I’m just not hungry…”

It was a lie, he could read the hunger clawing at the edges of her mouth easily. Her expressions hadn’t changed, she still wore each emotion like a winter coat, shrugging in and out of them as she struggled to ward off the cold. Lucifer could recognize each one, marble carvings of her joys and sorrows lining the halls of his mind where she had imprinted herself in him over days and months and heartbeats.

“You’re not eating either,” Natalie interrupted his thoughts, bringing Lucifer back to the present and aware of the tug of exhaustion lingering in his joints.

“I don’t need to eat. I get a free pass.” The words were hardly more than air and he dropped both of his hands to the table. Dried blood was still crusted under his fingertips, Lucifer wasn’t sure who it belonged to. He fought the urge to hide his hands under the table, to hide from this Natalie, her accusation still ringing in his ears like lashes on his back.

_Monster. Monster. Monster._

Her eyes met his then, searching for answers to questions she was afraid to ask, “What do you mean you don’t need to eat?”

Lucifer gripped the edge of the table then, carefully keeping the grit out of his words. “Exactly what it sounds like.” His jaw clenched in annoyance, muscles tight with tension jumping when he spoke. “So just hurry up and eat your sandwich so we can get outta this shithole.”

She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, nervous. She didn’t want to say the thoughts playing through her head then, and she glanced away from Lucifer, her eyes fixing on a waitress arranging straws in a cup, her body too weary for the retro uniform.

“I’m tired of walking.” Natalie said at last, the admission weighing on her in a way that wouldn’t if she knew what he would give for her, the lengths he would go. “Can’t we take a car or bus or something?”

He sat back carefully in the booth, his expression one of practiced calm, “If you eat something, I’ll consider it.”

_Of course,_ he wanted to say, but he couldn’t afford promises now, they were too precious of a commodity to be wasted on transportation when the heavy weight of finding her soul pressed down on him like the ache of gravity. They would get nowhere fast, especially now that his back bore the shrieking stress of nothing.

He hadn’t understood the weight of his wings until they were stripped away like time. He felt centuries of fatigue seep into the pits his wings used to occupy, luring him into a fever pitch of urgency.

But he made no promises.

Instead he watched as Natalie’s eyes glazed over, and a momentary flash of fear shocked across the green when she looked down at the sandwich that was getting soggy from neglect.

  
“…what’s that look for? It’s not poisoned.” The attempt of a joke fell flat before he even said it, and he bit the side of his cheek waiting for her response. He could hear the tap of his heel against the floor, and he counted the raps until Natalie finally spoke.

“I just….this feels familiar.” She kept her eyes turned downwards, almost questioning herself until she finally met his gaze. “Are you sure we’ve never done this before?”

“Had dinner at a diner in the valley? Yeah, I’m sure. Stop stalling and eat.” His response was short, and he just wanted to get out, to flee from this place that was boringly neutral and knew too little of the burdens he carried alone. The voices filling the diner grated against his forming headache, and Lucifer could feel the swell of it begin in his temples, beating in time with his heartbeat when he clenched his jaw.

Her shoulders turned in on themselves to shrink away, to shrink away from  _him._ In her eyes he was nothing short of the monster from fairy tales, stealing her away and hiding secrets that tugged the memories from her lungs. When she swallowed, she could still feel the catch of something in her throat. Something she could not name, but it burned to think about, as if she was fragmented and shredded from the inside out, leaving her raw and empty and so damningly afraid.

She blinked carefully at him, “…..But being a kidnapper, I thought – “

_Monster. Kidnapper._

The words crawled down Lucifer’s spine like hot coals and the anger curled his fists too quickly for him to staunch the fury that slammed his fist against the table. It rattled under the impact, the sound chasing away curiosity as their booth was shrouded in choking shadows. She was blind, blind and empty and he couldn’t stand it.

In her eyes was nothing. Not a glimmer of her former self shone through now-Natalie’s sunken December eyes as she looked at him. No spark of recognition that always burned him into a flame, and the stirrings of something like undeserved affection were gone, everything soft was gone and replaced with ice that made his fingertips run cold. He was sure if he touched her, his fingertips would crumble away into ashes.

“Don’t call me that!” His voice was low and sharp with intensity. Pain hung off each syllable, coating his words in the shielded agony he pretended he didn’t feel. “I already told you that’s not what this is. I’m trying to help you remember, Natalie. Bear with it a few more days and I promise you’ll be back to normal.”

Normal. She was torn from him like the wings on his back, and it ached like an open wound, the infection of it creeping through his veins like a poison tailored to him. It would kill him just slow enough that he would consider taking a knife in his own hands, if only to silence the prolonged anguish and put an end to the sleepless nights of fever and misery.

Normal. She was too cold, an ice storm in April that stung like only the desolation of white could. Each time she glanced at him was like a brush of winter, sticking his teeth together and letting frozen wind pool in his lungs so they could no longer expand and he would suffocate around mouthfuls of air.

“You aren’t supposed to hate me. You – I –“ Lucifer choked on the words, his tongue trying to spill out secrets that he wasn’t ready to share. He gasped under his own words, his chest heaving up and down rapidly as fell back down from the sky and into the present.  

She wasn’t supposed to hate him. She had spoken love to him on the bus, on the coast, and in countless smiles and touches between the first drop of blood she shed for him and her death. Sick and on the inching slope to her end she still spoke in gentle tones of love, and in the streams of blood running from his carved out wings, he finally responded.

Love ran through his veins, thick and hot like blood and he wouldn’t dare spill it for the coldness in front of him. He didn’t want to talk to  _her_. No, not this hollow version of Natalie who stared at him like he was the one to tear her open and toss her spirit into the wind.

_Back to normal._

Lucifer could feel the elasticity in his lungs crackle when he sighed, “You know what? You don’t need to worry about any of this. Relax and let me handle it, okay?” His whole body was held tight on a metal wire, and it creaked when he bent forward to rub his forehead, “Jeez, do I have a headache.”

He would fix this. He had no other choice. There was no living without her, not anymore. Not when she had sold her soul to free him from the chains of Hell, and he sent her right into its open arms.

Natalie excused herself to the restroom and he slumped onto the table, the pounding behind his eyes growing to a crescendo as loose thoughts rolled around in his mind like cats eye marbles.

The hunt would begin, and he had no heed to care if it turned bloody. He would burn down towns and cities in search of Death, tearing himself into shattered pieces until her soul returned to her body and he could lay down at her feet and beg for forgiveness. Winter would flee from her bones and the press of his lips to hers would erase the word  _Monster_ so all that existed in her would be love and fire. The scars of broken plans would fade from their skin, the absence of wings turning to summer as he wrapped himself in the humid sticky love that Natalie offered so freely.

She had carved her name into his bones, and he couldn’t breathe without feeling the kiss of  _Natalie_  against his lungs. Her life would be a part of him, her name seared into his very being until the days tumbled into ashes and stardust, and he would stand amongst it all, putting her back together a piece of himself at a time. There would be no room for error, and even less for uncertainty, but Lucifer swore Natalie would wake before morning did.


End file.
